How To Extend BlackBerry PlayBook Battery Life

Ty from Research In Motion has written up a nice tutorial on the BlackBerry Help blog. The tutorial outlines ways you can maximize the battery life of your PlayBook so you can stay connected, enjoy your media and capture amazing pictures and videos. Here’s some of the ways you can extend your PlayBook’s battery life:

Dim the screen

A quick tip to help extend battery life is to adjust the screen brightness of the display to a lower value than the one you are currently using. To change your brightness setting, go to the Home screen status bar, tap on the Battery icon and toggle the brightness slider (in the yellow box below) to your desired value. Note, the system keeps separate brightness levels for whether you’re plugged in and charging or running on battery power only.

Tip: You can peek at the status bar without leaving the app you’re currently using. This is a great way to quickly check notifications, see the time, keep an eye on your battery power level, change the brightness level and more!

To show the status bar while using an app or game, swipe in from the top-left or top-right corner of the bezel onto the screen (1st image). After doing this you can access the settings menu by tapping on the gear icon that appears in the top right corner.

Turn off the screen automatically

Consider setting a short backlight time-out value that causes your tablet screen to turn off when left idle for a specific amount of time (5 minutes, for example). To review and change your backlight time-out value, complete the following steps.

1. From the Home screen, swipe down from the top bezel to access your tablet settings.
2. Select “Screen”, then set your desired “Backlight Time-out” value from the drop down menu.

Enter standby mode automatically

In addition to the backlight time-out, you also have a standby time-out value, which will cause your tablet to enter standby mode automatically. To specify a standby time-out value, complete the following steps.

1. From the Home screen, swipe down from the top bezel to access your tablet settings.
2. Select “Screen”, then set your desired “Standby Time-out” value from the drop down menu.

Enter and exit standby mode

As mentioned in the previous tip, setting a standby time-out value can help extend battery life. Here’s how to enter standby mode manually, as well as exit standby mode if you manually enabled it or if the standby time-out was triggered.

To enter standby mode, go to the Home screen, tap on the Battery icon that appears on the Status Bar, then tap “Standby”

To exit standby mode, swipe from bezel to bezel. For example, swiping from the left to right or from the top bezel to the bottom bezel will exit standby mode. You also have the option of pressing the power button to wake up the tablet

Turn off Wi-Fi®

Any time you are in an area without Wi-Fi access or traveling for an extended period of time without having a network connection, consider turning off your tablet’s Wi-Fi radio to help extend battery life. To do this, tap on the Wi-Fi icon that appears on your Home screen status bar followed by setting the switch to “Off”.

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Turn off Bluetooth®

By default, when Bluetooth isn’t being used, the Bluetooth icon on the Home screen status bar will be white. If this is the case, consider turning off your Bluetooth radio by tapping on the white Bluetooth icon and setting the switch to “Off”.

Keep in mind that in order to use BlackBerry Bridge apps, for example, you’ll need to leave Bluetooth turned on so that your smartphone and tablet can communicate with each other.

Airplane Mode

If you want to turn all the radios off simultaneously, set your tablet to Airplane Mode by going to the Home screen, tapping the gear icon, selecting Airplane Mode (from the list of settings on the left part of the display), and then setting the switch to “Off”.

Change Application Behavior

The next time you know you will be unable to charge your tablet for a while, consider pausing apps or games on your tablet whenever you show the Home screen or switch between apps. To view the application behavior settings on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, complete the following steps.

1. From the Home screen, swipe down from the top bezel to access the tablet Settings.
2. Select “General” and set “Application Behavior” to “Paused”.

Turn off your tablet

Not planning on using your tablet for a while? If so, turn it off instead of leaving it in standby mode. To shut off your tablet, tap on the battery icon that appears on the Home screen status bar followed by tapping on “Shut Down”.

Charging Tips

Charge your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet using the charger provided by Research In Motion® (RIM®) in the box that your tablet came in. A very important thing to keep in mind is that other charging solutions may not provide adequate power to charge your tablet. In the event you want a charger that is designed to charge your PlayBook at a quicker rate, check out shopblackberry.com where you can purchase a rapid charger such as the BlackBerry Rapid Charger or the BlackBerry Rapid Charging Pod.